Judicial committee checking Cox’s role in real estate deal

ELLSWORTH — The state’s Committee on Judicial Responsibility and Disability is reportedly preparing to take its third swipe at Bangor District Court Judge David M. Cox — this time for his role in a controversial real estate case in Hancock County.

Although members of the committee are barred from discussing active investigations, sources have told the Bangor Daily News that a committee probe is in progress. Helen Dudman, chairman of the Committee on Judicial Responsibility and Disability, declined to comment on the Cox case Tuesday.

“I’m unable to confirm anything. Everything we do is confidential,” she said.

Appointed to the bench in 1984, Cox was reprimanded by the Committee on Judicial Responsibility and Disability in 1987 for his verbal abuse of a Brewer police officer. In 1989, the committee found that Cox had violated the judicial code when he offered a defendant a lighter sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. The from-the-bench plea-bargain effort prompted some Bangor area lawyers to later characterize the 3rd District Court jurisdictional area as “Cox’s County.”

Cox lost a civil suit last month in a Deer Isle real estate case and presently is seeking a new trial claiming that the trial judge erred in his admission and exclusion of certain evidence.

Cox and Emily Fuller Watson, a Stonington lawyer, were found guilty of conspiring to defraud Milton Ferrell of Miami, Fla., on July 27. After deliberating 90 minutes, the jury concluded that Cox and Watson deliberately misrepresented their intentions in order to acquire an easement from Ferrell to develop shorefront property in the Cat’s Cove area of Stonington.

Cox allegedly asked Ferrell for a right of way across the Florida man’s property and then sold it to Watson for $85,000. The Stonington lawyer needed the easement to provide access to undeveloped property near Ferrell’s. Ferrell had denied an earlier request for an easement from the attorney after learning Watson wished to create a subdivision.

The jury didn’t buy the defendants’ argument that Ferrell should have known that Cox could sell the easement. It awarded $250,000 in compensatory damages to Ferrell. Cox was ordered to pay $75,000 in punitive damages and Watson was ordered to pay $100,000 in punitive damages.

The Maine Code of Judicial Conduct requires judges to report gifts with values in excess of $100. In last month’s testimony, Cox had characterized Ferrell’s transfer of the easement as a “gift.” Cox’s attorney, Paul Chaiken, argued in his motion for a new trial that presiding Justice Donald Alexander erred in two evidentiary issues that resulted in “substantial unfair prejudice” to Cox.

Chaiken said the jury should not have been allowed to hear about the alleged judicial code violation stemming from Cox’s failure to report Ferrell’s gift. He said the evidence of the alleged violation should not have been admitted because “the alleged violation was too remote in time and was only arguably violated.”

Chaiken also is seeking a new trial on the basis that Judge Alexander excluded evidence related to the means in which Ferrell acquired the property in Stonington.

Chaiken termed the $250,000 compensatory award “excessive,” and argued that punitive damages are unconstitutional.

Watson is seeking a new trial on the basis that the evidence against her did not support the judgment that she conspired to commit fraud. She also has made other claims similar to those set forth in the Cox motion.

Reached in Lewiston Tuesday, Jack Simmons, Ferrell’s attorney in the Hancock County trial, said that while he planned to respond to Cox’s and Watson’s motions, he doubted that Judge Alexander would grant a new trial in the matter.

“They have failed to raise any issues that have not already been ruled upon by the judge,” Simmons said. “There’s nothing new here.”